On our second Disney day, we visited Epcot. One of my strongest memories from our first trip to Disney when the kids were 3 and 5 is of them running straight to the Epcot ball to get on line for Spaceship Earth. With no concept whatsoever of what the ride was, they just headed straight to the iconic landmark and got on line… and proceeded to be absolutely terrified of the dark ride and its creepy animatronic people. I seriously thought that was going to be our first and last ride of that entire Disney trip.
But my how times change! What was once terrifying was now hilarious and took a far backseat to the thrill rides in the park. Guardians of the Galaxy was definitely the focus of this Epcot visit and I had my first experience booking a spot in the Virtual Queue. A handful of the newer big rides at Disney utilize a virtual queue, where you have to get a virtual spot in line through the app and there is no walk-up line at all. It sounded wonderful if you could get a spot, but very less than wonderful if you could not because there was no other way to get on the ride.
We had decided to let the boys sleep in that day and head over to the park after lunch. But no sleeping in for me! I woke up before 7am to try to get a spot on the virtual queue. A very nice woman who was in front of us on the line for Rise of Resistance the night before heard me discussing the virtual queue with my husband and how I had no idea how it worked, and she gave me a great rundown of the process. Basically I logged into the Disney app just before 7am and started refreshing my screen. Right at 7, the “Join Queue” button popped up and I tapped it as fast as my fingers would go. We were fortunate enough to get a spot. (It’s all luck of the draw – basically everyone goes in at once and some people get a spot and other don’t even if you log in at the exact same time, and you have no choice in what callback time you will be assigned.) We were given Group 100 with an estimated callback time of 2:59 PM. That worked out perfectly for our plan to have a later park day.
The boys slept in while my husband and I had a leisurely breakfast and walk around the hotel grounds. We had some pool time and some lunch and arrived at Epcot just before 2:00, leaving us around an hour to kill before our expected Guardians of the Galaxy callback.
We headed straight to Test Track and had been on line for about 15 minutes when we started hearing announcements that the ride was “temporarily” down. We had heard that one before and didn’t want to relive our Millenium Falcon experience from the day before so we decided to abandon ship. We left the line and headed to Soarin’ instead. The wait there wasn’t too bad and we had a lot of fun with the trivia games while we were on line. We really enjoy this ride – the seats actually lift off the ground and subtly move along with the scenes in front of you, making you feel like you are actually flying.
Our estimated 2:00 queue time for Guardians of the Galaxy kept getting pushed back. It was helpful that the estimated wait times kept updating in the app so we always had a good sense of how much time we had before our number was called. In this case, we knew we had enough time to go ride Spaceship Earth. It was just as dated and creepy as I remembered it, but at least this time the boys found it humorous and a great opportunity to make old people jokes about their parents.
Just as we were wrapping up on Spaceship Earth, our Guardians of the Galaxy number was called! The app itself was updated to say it was time, and a push notification was sent to my phone. They give you an hour window from when you are called to get on line, but we quickly headed over since this was the main attraction for us that day.
The hope with a virtual queue is that they limit the number of people and spread out their arrival times so that the line never gets too long. Well… the hope was not the reality. We still waited almost an hour. But the queue had some interesting details and the ride itself was well worth the wait. It was definitely on the top 3 list for all of us.
After that we headed over to the World Showcase, which is my husband’s favorite party of Epcot (and maybe all of Disney). We had fun walking through all the different countries and eventually made our way to France for the Ratatouille ride. Unfortunately, the ride had a really long wait and we had dinner reservations in Mexico (and several countries to pass through still on our way there) so we had to skip it. This is probably the one ride I hadn’t been on before and I regret missing. But I did hear that a lot of people get motion sickness on the ride due to its combination of 3D, simulation, and actual spinning so maybe I was better off without it.
Rewinding back to our first trip when my oldest son was terrified of the Spaceship Earth ride, the thing that saved that trip for us was an amazingly kind cast member at the ride in Mexico. We thought the Gran Fiesta Starring the Three Caballeros would be the perfect ride to get him over his fears. But despite the tameness of the ride, he watched as the boats took off into darkness with terror in his eyes. The cast member at the entrance saw his fear, talked to him to sweetly, and gave him a flashlight to take on the ride with him (“as long as he didn’t shine it on any of the people eating in the restaurant”). And with that simple act of kindness, our entire Disney trip was saved. Our son got over his fear, loved the ride, and was ready to tackle more. Phew!
Since then, my son has always talked about how it was a dream of his to eat in the restaurant in Mexico that the boats go past on the Three Caballeros ride. Since this was the third of my planned three trips to Disney during their childhood, this was our last chance. I made a reservation and we headed over to Mexico for dinner.
Except… they didn’t have our reservation. Utterly confused, I pulled out my phone and showed it to them in the app. The hostess quickly realized what happened. I had booked La Hacienda de San Angel instead of San Angel Inn Restaurante. Seriously?!? Why would they make the names so similar? (And there’s a third San Angel restaurant too – La Cantina de San Angel.) My son looked heartbroken as we left the pyramid to walk across the way to the other restaurant. I explained to the host there what had happened, and he called back to the other restaurant and they kindly agreed to get us a seat at the intended restaurant and not charge me the cancellation fee at the one I had booked incorrectly. Phew! So thankful for that Disney magic!
And it completely lived up to our expectations. The food was great, the ambiance was perfect, and my son was all smiles.
After dinner we had about an hour left before park closing so we had time for one last ride. We briefly considered going back to France for Ratatouille but decided it was too far away and everyone still really wanted to ride Test Track, which we had given up on earlier. So off we went to Test Track.
The boys had fun designing a ridiculous looking vehicle and we loved speeding around the track. They got caught up in the silly simulated racetrack after the ride and we missed our last chance to book it over to Remy. But everyone was having a blast and we caught the fireworks on our way out.
Overall it was a fun day at Epcot. We basically planned our day around the Guardians of the Galaxy ride and had no regrets doing that. I will say that in retrospect, we probably should have arrived about an hour earlier because there were a few more things we would have liked to have done. But we hit our priorities and the highlights so it was definitely a great day.
